Ecuador urges action on Assange's failing health

QUITO: Ecuador has requested a meeting with Britain to discuss the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who it says is losing weight and suffering vision problems as he languishes in Ecuador's embassy in London.

The Foreign Minister, Ricardo Patino, told reporters in Quito he had requested a meeting with his British counterpart, William Hague.

Mr Patino said he wanted to discuss Mr Assange's worsening health after more than four months in the embassy where he is sheltering to avoid prosecution.

Ecuador said it had asked the British government for written assurances that Mr Assange, who has been granted asylum by Quito, will not be arrested in the event he has to go to hospital.

"As a result of the government of Britain's not giving safe passage, Julian Assange's health most certainly is beginning to be jeopardised and this is very serious," Mr Patino said in an earlier radio interview.

"We had hoped that the British government would defend and respect human rights and international law," Mr Patino said. "I hope that we will not have cause to regret a serious situation there."

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The 41-year old Australian walked into the Ecuador embassy in London on June 19 seeking asylum in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces questioning over alleged rape and sexual assault.

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He was granted asylum on August 16 but Britain has refused to grant him safe passage out of the country, and he remains in the embassy, putting Ecuador in a diplomatic stalemate with Britain.

Mr Assange denies sex crimes allegations against him, and claims he could eventually be passed from Sweden to the United States for prosecution over the WikiLeaks website's publication of hundreds of thousands of classified US documents.

Ecuador's deputy Foreign Minister, Marco Albuja, told Voice of Russia radio: "Assange has visibly lost weight, and we are very concerned for his health.

"In case of his illness we will have to pick among two options: to treat Mr Assange at the embassy or to hospitalise him."

Mr Albuja said Britain had not agreed to its request of safe passage for Mr Assange, but "is thinking it over".

Britain's Foreign Office said on Wednesday it had not yet received a request.

"Ecuador had not told us that Mr Assange was ill. However, were they to do so we would consider the matter," a Foreign Office spokesman said.

Assange said in an interview published on September 30 that his health was "slowly deteriorating" in the embassy, adding that he had "a racking cough".

He said he was keeping fit by using a running machine, boxing and working out every other day with a personal trainer – reportedly a former soldier in Britain's elite SAS who is now a whistleblower.